Secrets
by tolieawake
Summary: There are secrets he holds close, trapped tight against his chest and heart, where no-one knows to look and where he can keep them safe. Secrets he dares not tell anyone. A time-travel fix-it one-shot, where Stiles manages to fix everything.


There are secrets he holds close, trapped tight against his chest and heart, where no-one knows to look and where he can keep them safe. Secrets he dares not tell anyone.

* * *

When he is seven, all long limbs and wide eyes, innocent and untouched by the horrors of the world, he finds a book. It is written in a language he doesn't understand, and bound in leather. The smell of it makes his pulse race and his mind stir, focused in a way it has never been before.

He spends the next few years of his life focused on that book. He studies it, memorises it, and spends inordinate amounts of time tracking down the language it is written in and learning it.

Because of that book, he meets Deaton, who teaches him. Because of that book, he meets Talia, who smiles at him and holds him tight when his own mother dies.

Because of that book, he learns to control his spark.

* * *

When he is ten, he is laughing with Cora, waiting for Laura to come gather them up after school and take them back to the Hale house for cookies and milk and the stories that Uncle Peter tells. He can hear Derek nearby with his friends (he had convinced Cora that they should go looking for her siblings rather than passively waiting for Laura to come collect them, it wasn't like the high school was that far away).

Suddenly, something smashes into him, sending him reeling forwards. He stumbles, gasping, before tripping over his own feet and crashing to the ground. He bites his lip, feeling the sting of tears behind his eyes. By him, a basketball tumbles away. Cora gapes, staring around for where it came from.

In the next moment, Derek is there, leaning over him and helping him up, brows creased in concern. "Are you alright?" he asks. "Stiles?"

Back where Derek had come from, Stiles hears a door snick shut. Derek's friends disperse.

Derek takes them home and teaches Stiles how to play basketball.

* * *

When he is eleven, he finds a rose in his schoolbag. He stares, dumbfounded, at it for a moment, twisting it between his fingers (it is a good thing the thorns have been removed).

"What have you got there, Stiles?" Peter asks him, crouching down to be on eye-level with him. Stiles shrugs. Peter smirks. "Did you get that for someone?"

Stiles didn't get the rose, he just found it there. His thoughts whirl. Derek had packed his bag that morning, placing his lunch inside (he had slept over at the Hales' because his father had been called out on a nasty case he wouldn't tell Stiles anything about).

So, when Derek enters the kitchen, a bemused look on his face as though he has just encountered something or someone he cannot quite understand, Stiles thrusts the rose at him.

"Here," he says.

Peter grins that grin of his that is mostly teeth, but somehow doesn't scare Stiles in any way. Derek stares dumbfounded at the rose pressed against his chest, before opening and closing his mouth a few times, blushing a dull red, and leaving the room (he takes the rose with him).

Stiles turns a confused look on Uncle Peter, who just laughs, ruffles his hair, and tells him he'll understand when he's older (Stiles hates that phrase).

Later that night, he overhears Laura and Derek talking. Derek is telling Laura about the rose (he leaves off the bit where he was the only one who could have placed it in Stiles' bag in the first place). Laura laughs, but tells him he needs to be careful and not hurt Stiles' feelings. Stiles isn't sure what that's meant to mean, but finds that it means that Derek is strangely considerate of him after that.

Not that Derek had ever been mean in the past, but, well, Derek was older than him. So Stiles mostly hung out with Cora. Since the rose, Derek made a point to spend time with him.

So it was that Stiles was there one day when the pretty blonde woman leant over Derek, smiling at him and placing her hand on his shoulder in a way that made Stiles uncomfortable.

He told his father about it. His father got concerned, then rang Talia, and then they went out to the Hales and there was talking and yelling and Derek got all upset and moody and then pale and upset, and Stiles was worried for a little while that Derek would hate him.

Derek didn't hate him, and the blonde woman got sent to prison. Life continued on.

* * *

When he is sixteen, Stiles finds a gun. It is lying on his bedroom desk, silent and innocent. His father is the Sheriff and has taught his son how to handle guns, just in case. So Stiles picks it up, checks it – it is loaded, but the safety is on. He tucks it into his pants.

Then he heads out of the room, climbing into his jeep and driving to Scott's, where he picks up the other boy, before driving out to the Hale house. Derek and Cora are waiting for them, along with Isaac (Uncle Peter had been the one to realise what was happening at Isaac's house, one day when he was picking Stiles and Cora up from school, Stiles doesn't understand all of what happened after that, but now Isaac lives with the Hales and doesn't flinch nearly so much. Derek, in particular, looks after him as though they really were brothers).

They do their homework and laugh and Laura comes round and they plan a barbeque for the weekend. Then there is a howl from the woods and Derek and Laura take off. Uncle Peter comes running from the house, and Stiles and Scott and Isaac take only a moment to look at each other, before they are racing after them.

They are slower than the wolves, and when they arrive, Stiles feels his mouth go dry. There is an older man standing in a clearing. He has a few men with him and they have Erica and Boyd (Erica and Cora had become fast friends somewhere along the line, and Erica crushed on Boyd so bad that Stiles and Scott had befriended the other boy just to tell him to go out with her, since then, they had all been friends and often all the teens were found at the Hale house. Erica and Boyd had been meant to be going to another appointment for Erica that afternoon, before coming over for dinner).

The men are pointing arrows, actual bows and arrows, at Erica and Boyd. Talia has appeared from somewhere and is standing with Uncle Peter, Derek and Laura. The old man is smirking. A teen girl is standing near him, eyes wide as she stares around them.

"Go on," the old man says, "and they die."

Talia frowns, Uncle Peter looks furious, Laura determined, and Derek concerned. Stiles reaching back and clasps hold of the gun shoved into the back of his pants. Scott and Isaac exchange a glance, before starting to make their way, silent as they can, around the clearing and closer to Erica and Boyd.

"What are you doing?" the unknown teen girl asks. "They're human!"

"They hang out with wolves," the old man replies, "that makes them just as bad." She has her own bow and arrow and is looking around, uncertain as to what she should do.

Uncle Peter smirks at her. "You see," he says, "we're not the monsters." He gaze cuts to the old man, who takes a step forward, gun in his hand.

At the moment, several things happen. Scott and Isaac leap forward, tackling the men holding Erica and Boyd captive. They go down in a tangle of limbs and Laura and Derek rush forward, inhumanely fast, to help them.

The old man jerks, before lifting his gun, now aimed at Talia. Stiles shoots.

He doesn't think about it, just removes the safety, aims, and fires.

The old man stumbles, blood seeping out across his chest, before falling to his knees, gun tumbling from his hands.

There is a cry, and blonde woman Stiles vaguely recognises enters the cleaning, wielding a gun. Stiles shoots her too.

When the chaos clears, he finds that Uncle Peter and Laura were both shot by the woman. They aren't healing, but Stiles knows this, from the book he found when he was seven. So he gets the wolfsbane from the woman's gun, burns it, and uses it to clear the wolfsbane from their wounds so they can heal.

The men holding Erica and Boyd hostage are knocked out. The unknown teen girl is shaking and calling her father on her cell phone.

When her father arrives, he and Talia talk, the girl explaining what had happened. The man looks sad, but nods and calls some other men to help clean up.

No-one else finds out about any of it.

Stiles learns that the girl is Allison, and her father, Chris Argent. They make a treaty with the Hales, and life goes on. Allison and Scott start dating, and Stiles gets older. He learns that Chris Argent now spends his days policing the Hunters, ensuring that they follow the code. Allison befriends Lydia, who joins their group, bringing with her Jackson (which takes some getting used to) and Danny.

There is only one other hiccup – but Stiles' knowledge of his spark means he is easily able to stop the Darach when she comes after Derek.

He graduates school with his friends and family, his pack, around him.

* * *

But these moments, these are not his secrets. His secrets are far more dangerous, more painful, than the life he has lived. His secrets trace out behind his closed eyelids a life that is not his own, deaths that never happened. When he is nineteen, he finds his secrets within his mind.

Close to his heart he keeps them. Laura, cut in half, eyes glazed in death. Peter, burnt and crazed and burning. Derek, eyes red, face etched in pain. Jackson, shaking, with blood on his hands. Lydia, mouth wide in a scream. Isaac, eyes flashing gold as he ducks beneath a blow. Erica, cold body cradled in Derek's arms. Boyd, face blanching as claws pierce through his chest. Allison, hands shaking as she threads a needle. His father, gun held in a shaking hand, blood splattered over his face. Melissa, standing tall yet shaken, a scalpel clenched tight in her hand, dripping blood.

Closer still, he keeps the deepest secrets, the ones he barely dares breath in his own mind. A line of mountain ash. The cracked spine of a leather book. The red of Lydia's hair as she leans towards him. The feel of Peter's hand on his shoulder, anchoring him, even as he draws strength from the older wolf's very lifeforce. Items scattered before him. A book. A basketball. A rose. A gun.

And the secret he keeps closest – the deepest secret nobody knows (not even him, most of the time) – is this:

He remembers.


End file.
